We provide cycling fitness testing to give you a complete picture of your current fitness.

Lab Quality Fitness Testing and Assessment from £45.00

Testing is a fundamental part of your training plan, with accurate testing we can define your exercise training zones ensuring the effectiveness of your training effort.

If you want to train effectively and safely to achieve your goals from the start whatever you do, test before you start training. Testing will give you an accurate picture of your fitness and we will provide knowledge and understanding of your exercise zones providing the perfect safe starting point for your training.

Each of us is unique with our own optimal exercise zones. Your exercise zones cannot be accurately calculated without testing. The non-test calculated exercise zones are based on age, weight, and averages, but no one is an average. Your maximum heart rate and therefore your exercise zones are based on your individual physiology. Figures calculated without testing can be wildly inaccurate and as such would have major negative consequences with regard to your training not to mention your ability to accurately pace yourself in events.

Fitness is always changing and so regular testing is vital, not just to measure improvements in performance but more importantly to reassess your exercise zones and therefore allow you to continue to “train smart” by allowing you to accurately target your work intervals therefore safely maximizing your potential gains. This regular testing is an essential element and a fundamental pillar of any effective training plan. With accurate testing, your training will be safer and more productive.

By accurately testing to discover when you reach anaerobic threshold we can calculate where each different exercise zone begins and so target your sessions and workouts exactly. Threshold moves as you gain or lose fitness and form, not testing or inaccurate testing will result in you not achieving your potential, if anaerobic threshold is assessed too high it could result in failure to complete training sessions, overexertion, fatigue and perhaps injury or overreaching leading to overtraining. If too low or high it will result in ineffective training which will not produce the desired results and adaptations within your body.

You can test yourself perhaps using the Threshold Test described later in this chapter, self-testing is open to more variation but with practice and increased understand it can be extremely accurate. However, without the necessary knowledge or equipment, it is easy to draw the wrong conclusions about your strengths and weaknesses which can lead to bad future training decisions. To avoid any question of accuracy you can also test with us at Bpm Coaching Ltd or at another independent facility with testing equipment designed to access your exercise zones accurately.

At Bpm Coaching Ltd we provide fitness testing to give you a complete picture of your current fitness. we test you to accurately assess your exercise zones on state of the art equipment using two different methods that utilise the best in clinical testing equipment via graded exercise tests where your body is subjected to gradually increasing exercise levels. A test is no more challenging than a short steep climb.

We attach a heart rate sensor and a lactate sensor or face mask breather. You perform a controlled graded session on a state of the art static trainer. When the test is complete you cool down and we calculate the results.

Muscle oxygenation is a measurement of how much hemoglobin is carrying oxygen in within the muscle. It is expressed as a percentage and often abbreviated as Sm02. Muscle Oxygenation is a localized measurement directly related to exertion levels and blood flow under workload. Oxygen transportation and utilization is a key factor in determining an athlete's endurance capacity and calculating accurately their exercise zones.

Methods of Testing With BPM Coaching

Option 1:

We can test to pinpoint Anaerobic Threshold using medical grade LED non-intrusive technology. This system is completely non-intrusive in that blood samples are not taken and waste gases are not captured; instead, we use medical grade LEDs to look into your calf muscle to constantly monitor cellular changes with regard to localized muscle oxygenation. The LED infrared technology measures the difference in absorption of light passed through the muscle tissue under exertion to identify the amount of hemoglobin that is carrying oxygen and the hemoglobin that is not. From this, our system will detect accurately your endurance threshold for both heart rate and power allowing us to calculate again accurately your training zones.

We perform metabolic testing using the Korr Cardiocoach to conduct the panicle of fitness assessments, clinically measuring your ability to transport and utilise oxygen. Vo2 testing is slightly more invasive in that when under exertion waste gases are captured via a breathing face mask and then analysed to determine your oxygen utilization. The test will automatically detect anaerobic threshold. This test is still considered the gold standard. The data gathered during the test will then accurately calculate the following:

Vo2 testing using the Korr Cardiocoach to access exercise zones £75 per test

In addition, we will give you a body composition assessment, which will include body fat percentage, total body water percentage, visceral fat rating, metabolic rate metabolic age and daily calorie intake using the Tanita Innerscan.

Lab testing every month is the ideal scenario for the dedicated athlete, however, testing every 2/3 months to back up your own monthly testing ensuring you are on track is extremely beneficial. One-off testing every year at the start of a training plan ensures that you commence your training at the correct intensity, is also extremely beneficial and highly recommended.
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Self Test

When self-testing try to make the same test at the same point in the training period or month, under as near as possible the same conditions, using the same equipment. Power meters, for example, work to tolerance of accuracy so if you use two different meters that are perhaps 5% adrift of each other you could be performing sessions in completely the wrong training zone. This will result in not achieving potential, could result in failure to complete sessions and could result in injury. If you use the same meter its accuracy is in many ways immaterial.
Measure your HR and if possible cadence and power and always ensure you are rested before you test. The more you test the better at testing you become and as a result, your sessions will be more productive. There are many protocols to test performance. Some are simple such as perhaps just measuring the distance covered over a fixed time or the time taken to cover a fixed distance. However, testing FTP is far more useful as the result can then be used to target further training.

Threshold Test on the road or on a Static trainer

Your goal in this test is to average the highest watts possible for a 20 minute period of time. When you get to the main effort, make sure to pace yourself so that you don’t tire too quickly. It must also be said that test takes practice and the more you perform them the better you become at producing an accurate result.

1. Start out with a 20-minute warm-up, which means building up to and then just riding along at a moderate pace, at about 65% of your max heart rate (HR) zone 2, which is what we call your endurance pace. (Be sure to do the same warm-up at the same intensity each time you do the test.)

2. Next do three 1 minute fast-pedaling efforts at 100 rpm, with one minute of easy recovery pedaling between each fast pedaling effort. After these three sets of fast pedaling, ride easy for five minutes at endurance pace (65% of max HR) zone 2.
Now the real work begins.

3. Make a 30-minute time trial effort. If outdoor try to do this on a road where you can maintain your effort, a steady climb or flat road and allows you to put out a strong pace throughout the test. Use the first 10 minutes to steadily build the effort so that the last 20 minutes is at your best sustainable pace. Don’t start out too hard! Get up to speed and then try to hold that speed as steadily you can, then going as hard as you can at the end. If you’ve never done one of these efforts before, I suggest trying it on a steady climb or into a slight headwind, which forces you to put out a maximum effort for the entire 20 minutes.

6. Finish the ride with 10-15 minutes easy pedaling.
Your goal in the main portion of the test (the 20-minute segment) is to produce the highest average watts possible over the entire time. The test doesn’t work if you start out too hard in the build-up and suddenly run out of energy because you won’t be able to produce your true maximal, steady-state power. It’s always better to start out a little under what you believe to be your FTP, build up along the way, and then ride at your maximum level in the last three minutes.

Now that you’ve done the test and downloaded your data, find your average power and HR from the entire 20-minute effort. Take this number and subtract 5% percent from it. The result is your functional threshold wattage value or FTP (Functional Threshold Power) and FTHR (Functional Threshold Heart Rate). For example, if you averaged 260 watts during the 20-minute time trial, 5% of 260 (260 x 0.05) is 13, and 260 minus 13 is 247. Your FTP is 247 watts. Do the same for your HR. Check your FTHR against your FTP.

The reason for subtracting 5% from your average watts during the 20-minute test is that your FTP is the highest average power you can theoretically maintain for sixty minutes. Most athletes have a hard time putting out maximal effort for sixty minutes, however, and those who can learn very quickly that a sixty-minute time trial is not much fun and extremely fatiguing. Twenty minutes is a more realistic time frame. A shorter time period, however, incorporates more of the athlete’s anaerobic capacity, which skews the wattage data by about 5%. By subtracting that 5%, you end up with a wattage number that should be very close to your true FTP over a sixty-minute effort.

Once you have calculated your FTP or FTHR score, you can calculate your exercise zones as a percentage of FTP or FTHR:

Maximum Heart Rate Test

This is the most basic of tests that will allow you to calculate your heart rate based exercise zones an exercise zone table once you have tested and discovered your maximum exercise heart rate.
Firstly warm up thoroughly for at least 15 minutes. On a long, steady hill or turbo at a moderate resistance start off fairly briskly and increase your effort every minute. Do this seated for at least ﬁve minutes until you can’t go any faster. At this point get out of the saddle and sprint as hard as you can for 15 seconds. Stop and get off the bike and immediately check your HR reading. This is your max HR.

Your max HR ﬁgure is sport speciﬁc so, for example, your maximum on a bike will invariably be much lower than it is when you're running. There are a couple of theories on why. One of those theories is that the bike is taking some of your weight. The other is that cyclists are better at cycling than running and runners are better at running than cycling.

At BPM Coaching we provide fitness testing to give you a complete picture of your current fitness.

We test you to accurately assess your exercise zones on state of equipment using two different methods that utilise the best in clinical testing equipment via graded exercise tests where your body is subjected to gradually increasing exercise levels.